Dying to Love

by Reese Rivers

  “Why? Why can’t you trust me and why do you think I have a death wish?” I ask softly.

  He stares at me for a few beats like he’s trying to decide if he wants to lay it all out for me and then slowly starts to nod.

  “It’s because of Tara. I can’t trust you because I think in the back of your mind you haven’t quite decided whether you want to stay or if you want to go be with her.” My mouth drops open at that bomb and I start shaking my head in anger. His expression just shifts to understanding. “Tell me how many times you’ve held a gun to your head since she died.”

  I choke in a gasp and look past him at Tara who’s just popped in. “Oh no he didn’t! Who the fuck does this asshole think …”

  “Right there! She just showed up, didn’t she?” He asks.

  My eyes bounce from Tara to Dev and then back again as the first flutters of panic start in my chest. He knows … knows I’m crazy. I don’t, don’t …

  “Kelsey! Look at me!” He barks and I jerk my gaze back to him even as tears start to well up.

  “She comes when you can’t deal. When it’s too much, right?”

  I nod as the first tear falls.

  “You won’t let her go and you won’t let whatever happened go and it’s eating you up so bad that you are keeping her here until you decide if you can find the courage to go with her. Kelsey, I can’t trust you because you might actually decide to go and then … where would that leave me?”

  All the tears fall as I look back at my best friend and tilt my head asking if that’s the truth. She takes a deep breath and squares up to me.

  “It’s time, babes. Tell him, tell him what happened. First step to letting me go and starting your new life.”

  My face crumples as deep pain slices through me but I breathe through it and start to talk with my voice shaking and cracking.

  “They didn’t come back. Tommy, Lisa, Ryan - they didn’t come back. We waited a full day. They might have just had trouble with the truck or had to hold up somewhere so we waited but halfway through the second day Tara was getting frantic so we went out looking. We drove around for hours searching but we never found them. Never even found their truck. We kept going further and further searching for them but we were getting pretty close to not having enough gas to get back. I tried, I promised her we would come back and start again the next day but she wouldn’t listen. She kept saying one more hour, one more town until I wasn’t sure we’d even make it back on the gas we had left. Finally, I turned us around and started back. I can still hear her screaming at me to stop. Over and over again. Oh, God! Why did I stop?”

  “Because you wanted to try to calm me down. You wanted to hug me tight and promise we’d find them. You were trying to be a good friend,” she tells me from the corner of the gym, nodding to tell me to keep going.

  I nod quickly back as the first sparks of anger start to push away the broken pieces of my sadness and I don’t even realize I’m talking to her now and not Devin.

  “Yeah, I wanted to do that but you didn’t let me, did you? No, you just jumped out of the truck and started screaming his name!” I jam a finger in her direction. “You broke his number one fucking rule, Tara! Panic will kill you faster than the dead will. Keep your head. Don’t get dead.” I spit out bitterly.

  She nods as her own tears start to flow. “I didn’t see the one under the car.”

  “That’s right! You didn’t fucking see the one under the car and you got bit because you lost your fucking head and you screamed and then the dead came pouring out from everywhere and you fucking froze.”

  “Keep going. Tell him what happened next.”

  I focus my eyes back on Devin, shocked that I forgot he was here with me for a minute.

  “What happened next, Kelsey? Get it out. Get it all out.” He has so much compassion and understanding on his face that I can’t stand it so I turn back to face Tara.

  “I got her back into the truck before the rest of the dead could reach us and I brought her home. There was nothing else to do. We both knew what that bite on her ankle meant so I brought her home and we waited it out. It was a small bite and far from anything vital so it took a long time. A really fucking long time. Long enough for her to work on me.”

  “I don’t want to die as one of them. I want to die as me. You need to help me, Kells. You’re my best friend. I need you to do it. I’m ready. Silver lining, Kells. I get to be with my parents and Ryan. Please do it for me? Here, I’ll hold it, all you have to do is pull the trigger. I’m ready, I’m happy to go. Do it, do it, please, Kelsey, do it!” I repeat the words Tara spoke to me.

  I let out the loudest, most anguished filled roar I have ever heard and scream it at her until my voice cracks and dies and then I sink to my knees and the best I can muster is a broken whisper.

  “What about me, Tara? Where was my silver lining? Where was my happy? ‘Cuz I wasn’t ready and I didn’t want to do it. But you kept pushing and pleading and begging and you didn’t care that I would be left all alone. You didn’t care that doing it would break me into a thousand pieces because you got to have your silver lining. You pushed and I begged you to stop and you pushed and I got mad and you pushed and I got angry that you were doing this to me and you pushed and I … I … I pulled the … trigger.”

  I can’t look at her anymore so I look at Devin and my voice is raw and hoarse. “I pulled the trigger … in anger. I killed her and it wasn’t out of love to end her suffering. It was because she … she broke my heart.”

  He drops to his knees in front of me and takes my hands and squeezes them so tight but I have to finish this now.

  “I was so mad for so long until one day, I wasn’t. I was just too tired to be mad anymore so I got the gun and I held it to my head but there wasn’t anyone there to tell me to do it. No one to push and then Tara was there and she told me to snap out of it and to go have a hen party because the girls needed me … so I did.”

  I feel hollow, like all the poison that I’ve had building inside has been flushed out. I tip forward so I can rest my forehead against his and grip his hands tight.

  “I don’t want to go, Dev. I don’t need to go because I got my silver lining after all. You. You and Oliver and Linc and Grayson, you all are my silver lining and I promise I won’t go, I promise, I choose you.”

  He sweeps my hair back and tucks it behind my ears. “I believe you.” And then he pulls me to him.

  Devin

  Ipull her the rest of the way into my lap and turn her so her back is against my chest and then hold her tight. This woman is so damn strong and she has no clue. What Tara did was a shitty, selfish thing. Not the getting bit part but the goading Kelsey into pulling the trigger part and Kelsey’s paid for it ever since. She’s let the guilt over what happened eat her up … just like I have. I hope her finally pouring it all out will help start healing her. No matter what I said to her, I am in love with this woman and I owe it to her to try and find my own peace. I wait until her breathing calms and the small little hitches in her chest stop and then I put the same trust in her that she has just shown me as I lay my ghosts out for her.

  “I was a middle school English teacher. It was all I ever wanted to do. You see, I had shitty parents who did shitty things to me and I ended up in foster care. I was in a group home by fourteen. That’s where I met Oliver. I was on a bad path and probably would have ended up in jail by the time I was eighteen but there was this one teacher, Mr. Handlin, who wouldn’t stay off my back. He stuck with me no matter how much I lashed out or acted out in class. He made me a bet that I couldn’t read thirty books by the end of the school year and if he lost the bet he would buy me a brand new bike. I was a stubborn little shit back then and I wanted to rub his nose in it and I also really wanted that bike. I took the bet and I read his thirty books and then I kept on reading and it changed my life, he changed my life. I got that new bike just in time for summer break and then I barely rode it because I was too busy reading. After that, I wante
d to be an English teacher just like him so maybe one day I could do something like that to change a kid’s life for the better.

  “The day this all kicked off, a bunch of students came in from recess with bite marks. They said there were some adults chasing kids and hurting them so we went into lockdown. Nobody at the school knew what was going on but an hour into the lockdown we got swarmed by parents demanding their kids. It was madness. Everyone was panicking and there were so many bloody people running through the halls just trying to get to their kids. After a few hours, the principal had us bring the students that were still left to the gym to wait for parents to show up and get them. By this time, there were two, maybe two hundred and fifty kids left and there were at least twenty who had been … bit.”

  Kelsey stiffens in my lap and wiggles out of my hold so she can turn around and face me. Her face is tear-streaked and her eyes are red and swollen and she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

  She takes my hands into hers and nods softly. “Tell me.”

  I stare into her eyes and I don’t want to. I don’t want to say what happened after that. I’ve never talked about it, never told the guys how it all went down. Even as I open my mouth to tell her I don’t want to, visions of what came next slam into me and it just starts pouring out.

  “No one else came and it got late so we pulled out the gym mats and shut half the lights out so they could try and get some sleep. There was a lot of crying at first but eventually, they all settled down and went to sleep. There were only five of us teachers left to watch over all of them so we made a schedule to take it in shifts so someone was awake through the night. I took the three to six shift because I never did sleep much anyway. The moans and then screams woke me around two o’clock in the morning. At first, I thought some of the crazy people had gotten in somehow and were attacking - but it was so much worse and it happened so fast. The kids who had been bitten had died in their sleep and came back and we were completely unprepared. They just tore through the sleeping kids.

  “I … I tried. I just kept pulling kids off of each other but it was next to impossible to see who was attacking who. There was so much blood everywhere and I didn’t know which way to turn, who to help. I finally just grabbed a kid in each arm and hauled them over to the bleachers that had been pushed in to make room. I boosted them up to the top and left them there out of reach and dove back in for more. I managed to get six more kids up to safety before there were too many of the dead ones coming after me so I climbed up with the kids I managed to save and watched and listened as my students died. So many of them called my name, begging me to save them.”

  I pull my hands from hers so I can run my fingers through the hair that’s fallen over my face as my head lowered with the recounting. I yank on the long strands so the pain will help me stay on the surface of the churning emotions inside of me when all I really want to do is let go and drown so I never have to think of this again. Her small hands rub up and down my thighs as she tries to comfort me but she stays silent, letting me get there at my own pace. I suck back the angry tears that want to flow and clear my voice.

  “The kids up on the bleachers with me were crying and screaming but the top was so narrow I couldn’t get to them without falling off myself so I just tried to yell to them that we would be okay, that someone would come for us. Both of those were lies. None of them were okay and I hadn’t really saved them at all because every single one of those children had been bit. I just managed to prolong their terror as we sat there for hours while more and more of their classmates turned into zombies, moaning and reaching up for us. One by one those poor, terrorized kids fell to the infection. They just slumped over as they died and the smallest nudge sent them back down to the waiting hands clawing for us. Then they would rise back up minutes later and start moaning and reaching too.

  “I failed them. I didn’t manage to save a single one. I failed them all, Princess, and I still see each one of their snarling, dead faces every day. I sat there for three more days staring down at all those little faces I didn’t save and memorized each one until the others came and rescued me.”

  “It’s not your fault, Devin. You didn’t do that to them. It’s not your fault.” She tries to tell me in a broken voice. Somewhere inside me a couple of cracks fill in but there are oh so many cracks that it barely mends what I live with.

  “I’ve held a gun to my head three times since then but every time I try to end it their ghosts come and surround me and I don’t feel like I have the right to end my suffering. I feel like I need to stay alive so that someone remembers them. But what if one day I’m not strong enough and what if I finally choose to forget them and just let go?”

  Kelsey places her hands on both sides of my face and stares intently at me. Her face is filled with a look of love and compassion that I can’t believe I deserve when she speaks.

  “What if you choose to remember them and love them instead of suffering for them? Remember how they would laugh and scream in happiness as they played at recess. Remember how their faces would glow when they got a good grade or the surprise and satisfaction when they understood something new and interesting you taught them? Dev, what if they haunt you because they want you to remember who they were - not what they became?”

  I jerk back at the idea of that and squeeze my eyes closed. All I ever see since it started was the fear and then the hunger as they reached for me. I hear their screams and cries and I forgot about who they were. I forgot how Seth McMillen had the most infectious laugh and would get the rest of the class cracking up until even I was smiling. I forgot how Annabeth, with her thick glasses, would hug her books to her chest when she read something that made her happy. I forgot about Jenny, Violet, and Becky passing notes all through class and stifling their giggles thinking I wouldn’t hear them. I forgot about Thomas, Gavin, and Max having mock Avenger battles on the playground and how they would play rock, paper, scissors to see who would get to be Iron Man that day. When I open my eyes again, they are all sitting around us, criss-cross applesauce, their eager faces upturned waiting for me to begin reading the next chapter of Harry Potter, The Warrior Cats, or whatever novel we were working our way through.

  Their happy faces finally break the dam I lock my pain behind and it all floods out. I haven’t cried since it happened. I’ve raged and screamed and cursed but I have never cried for the beautiful children I once cared for and helped shape. As the hot, fat tears pour down my face and the sobs shake my body, Kelsey wraps herself around me and holds on tightly while every tear that falls works to seal another crack in my soul.

  My voice is a rough rasp as I bury my face in her hair and whisper, “Thank you.”

  Kelsey

  We hold on to each other for hours. There’s no talking, we’ve talked enough and shared what we needed to share - now we are just holding on, taking comfort in each other, processing what we’ve been through.

  Now that I’ve voiced it, said out loud what happened and how I felt, I feel like I’m a step or two closer to forgiving myself for pulling that trigger in anger and forgiving Tara for the part she played in getting us there. I know just sharing it with Dev won’t be a magic cure to all the crazy that lives in my head but I already feel lighter for letting it out.

  What Devin went through, the pain he’s been living with is unimaginable to me. To hear what happened and how he lived with the blame for it for so long, I have no words. I’m just so grateful he opened up and shared it with me. Seeing Devin so vulnerable and open has me wanting to hold him close for as long as he’ll allow it.

  At some point, Linc opens the door and looks in on us. His expression softens when he sees how Devin is holding me like a lifeline and how I’m holding him back just as tightly. His eyes are so full of love as he backs out and softly closes the door again.

  Sometime later, Devin starts speaking again. He tells me about the students he taught. Funny little stories of their antics and other stories about those he worked so hard t
o reach and inspire. He tells me their names and what was special about each one of them and I know this is his way of showing me he’s going to stay too. Stay with me and remember them without the suffering but with love instead.

  We move to the kitchen and I make us a simple supper that we share at the stainless steel table, sitting side by side on stools as I tell him the good stories of Tara and our history before the dead rose. Once the leftover food is put away and the dishes washed, he pulls me back into the gym and without words, our bodies come together. Our clothes melt away and this time our mouths are slow and our hands are soft as we explore each other. When he fills me this time, it’s with tenderness and his slow, deep strokes are just as powerful as the madness we shared earlier against the wall but it’s a different kind of power. This time when we reach the peak together it’s not frustration and anger that pushes us over, it’s love.

  “You’re mine and I’m never letting you go, Princess.” He tells me when we come back down from the high. I don’t plan on letting him go either.

  The others give us space when we finally go back to the camper for the night and I lead him up to my bed where we wrap each other with our arms and sleep through the night, drained from the emotional day and safe from our ghosts that are finally starting to fade.

  The next few days roll in hot and sunny but the next round of harvesting is still a week or two away so we find other ways to stay busy.

  Oliver teaches me how to make the amazing pork dumplings and this time we share the finished product with the other guys instead of eating them all ourselves.

  Devin reads to me from a favorite book that he found in one of the bins we brought back from a library while we sit on a blanket in the middle of the garden.

  Linc tries to teach me how to play chess but we always end up making out like teenagers halfway through his lessons. I’m okay with that, chess is overrated and I can’t get enough of his big broad body and the sweet tender way he kisses me.